New Delhi, June 14 (IANS): The Congress on Sunday said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj should resign after allegations of her helping former IPL chief Lalit Modi in leaving India emerged.

"Sushma Swaraj must resign on moral grounds," Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said.

The demand came after a British newspaper said Keith Vaz, one of Britain's longest- serving Indian-origin MPs, used Sushma Swaraj's name to pressure Britain's top immigration official to grant travel papers to Modi.

"The minister backed a person like Lalit Modi, against whom a look out notice was there ... All this is very serious. The external affairs minister is supporting a person who is on a run," Digvijaya Singh said.

He added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should clarify on the issue.

The external affairs minister, meanwhile, took to Twitter to clarify, and said she helped Lalit Modi to go out of India on "humanitarian ground" to meet his cancer-afflicted wife who was to undergo surgery in 2013, before becoming a minister.